Wednesday, July 26, 2017

OMG! OMG! OMG! All my dreams have come true! The stars have all aligned! We got to go to the BACK SIDE of the Rock three mornings in a row!!! It is was absolutely amazing! There was a -1.7 and -1.9 tide, a sand bar connecting the first needle and the Rock, plus the surf was small! There was creatures to discover everywhere you turned!
Lets just make a list off the things:

SOO many Sea Stars, including Ocre, Six-rayed, and Red Brittle

SOOO many Chitons (Leatherback, Mossy, and Lined)

Skeleton Shrimp

Lemon, Opalescent, Janolus, Rustanga, Frosted Nudibranchs

Olive Snails and their maze of paths

Sea Urchins

Decorator, Red Rock Crabs

Sea Anenomes

Muscles

Barnacles

I definitely missed some of the things people found, it was impossible to see everything, but something so special. There was two moments that stood out to me. The first one was all of sudden I turned around and realized I was not surrounded by tourists. All of the people who got up early to come out were locals, who love the ocean and understood how special it was to be on the backside of the Rock. The second was a different day when one of our interpreters-Kari- was standing at the base of the first needle looking at the Common Murre colony looking for chicks, when an adult Common Murre dive bombed her. It was really close to colliding straight into her. It was terrifying and hilarious at the same time. All of us had so much fun exploring and nerding out back there!

Monday, July 24, 2017

This weekend was the second annual Manzanita Music Festival in downtown Manzanita! Two HRAP staff members-Alanna and Jesse- went down and represented the program with a booth. Alanna is not on staff this year but she has been for the last five years and is now off studying the ocean at Oregon State University but she came home to volunteer her time at the festival for the program. It was an AWESOME weekend with great music and fun people. Alanna and Jesse made more fun puffin puppets and colored lots of pictures with kiddos and even some adults who took the puffin to the next level with extra details and teeth(do puffins even have big white square teeth?). They both had so much fun representing the program off the beach! Thank you Manzanita Music Festival for allowing us to be part of your awesome event. We can not wait for next year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Guess what? Guess what? THE BLACK OYSTERCATCHERS HAVE
BABIES!!!! THREE OF THEM!!!!!! AND THEY SURVIVED THEIR FIRST WEEK OF LIFE!!!! We are REALLY excited about the little
fellas. It has been a week and a half of a lot of excitement and a little added
stress. We are working hard to ensure that the parents are happy and that the
babies are protected. Please help us do that by understanding why there might
be more area closed off than normal. Black Oystercatchers are extremely special
birds and we are lucky to have a pair that nests at the Rock.

Ready for the quick
and dirty story of Black Oystercatchers: They are shore birds who are
considered a species of concern because their population is so low. It is
estimated that there is only 400 on the entire coastline of Oregon,
approximately one for every mile. They are territorial and will loudly chase
off any other Oystercatcher that comes to close. At the Rock, there has been a
pair nesting for a while. Unfortunately, it has been three years since they were
successful in their nesting, even though they have tried relentlessly.

This year that changed, there was a successful nest. We
suspect that the reason for the somewhat sudden change was that there is a new
pair of Black Oystercatchers nesting at the Rock and that one of them is the
off-spring from a few years ago. And that the old pair has simply moved over to
the Needles as happy “grandparents”.

Saturday, July 8, 2017

❤ Here is an update of our magical moments from Haystack Rock! ❤

One of our favorite visitors, Barbara Hauser, wearing the latest fashion in Puffin! Puffins line down alongside the center of her coat's zipper. Don't we all wish we had one of these? 🙋🙌

This is what our inter tidal area of Haystack Rock's Marine Preserve looks like once the tide starts coming up quick! Be aware and don't forget, the ocean comes up really quick (after hitting low tide)!💧💦

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Saturday was a busy day at the Rock. There were three events
going on simultaneously—a guided tide pool tour, the Great Puffin Watch, and a
Discover Haystack Rock event about puffins. All three went totally perfectly.
Discover Haystack Rock is an event/activity that we put on once a month throughout the summer. This month we made paper puffin puppets out of brown paper bags,
paper, glue, and super fun googley eyes. The children, parents, and even
grandparents loved every second of it. The wind served to be a little bit of an
issue, but luckily no puffin puppets went flying away. All the kiddos walked away with
a fun new Tufted Puffin puppet and a ton of new knowledge about the wonderful
puffins living at Haystack Rock. It was absolutely FABULOUS!

Yay puffins!

A grandpa really wanted to make one for his grandson.

One Visitor took the puppet to the next level by adding eyebrows and a beautiful rainbow.

"Quick everyone hold up their stunning puffins!"

Even our HRAP staff Kari and Jesse got involved in the fun!

Thank you to all the visitors that came out to Discover Haystack Rock with us today and there will be another chance to Discover Haystack Rock in August!